Painful Periods Are Not OK.

It’s estimated that 15% of women have their lives disrupted in some way by painful periods. A total of 80% of women will suffer from painful periods in their lifetime. 

Yet as a woman myself, I can attest to the fact that this topic is rarely, if ever, talked about, unless in small circles of women. 

Diagnoses such as endometriosis are on the rise, as is infertility. It’s important we pause to ask why? Why are so many women suffering?

I believe it comes down to one thing: hormone imbalance. 

Whether it’s female teens dealing with their first years of menses or a 30’s-40’s woman dealing with poor sleep and irregular cycles, it seems more common than not to have abnormal cycles. Women who join my course are usually dealing with some sort of abnormality as it pertains to their cycle or the way they feel, and looking to find ways to simply feel better. It’s my opinion that we as a society need to start treating this from a functional medicine approach, getting to the root cause, as opposed to treating with various pharmaceuticals (usually oral contraceptives).

One of the most common things I hear from course takers is the zero hesitation on behalf of their GPs and OB/GYNs to prescribe birth control to rectify their painful cycles (by eliminating them), and the fact that getting to the root cause of their imbalances is never mentioned.

Could this be because modern medicine only wants to treat as opposed to prevent? It seems there is more money to be made there. I digress…

This is why I lead women to working with functional medicine practitioners, to do the proper testing, and to get “underneath the hood” of their imbalances. It infuriates me that this isn’t the norm! So many women are suffering from migraine headaches, weight gain, crappy sleep, and painful periods and yet, we Band-Aid them instead of actually helping.

So where does the pain come from? While I’m not here to diagnose, I will say that in my experience, there are various underlying issues that could be at play. Most common (at least for my course takers and myself) is estrogen dominance. In other words, when your estrogen is high in relation to your progesterone. Without enough progesterone to balance the estrogen, the endometrial lining could potentially become thicker. In my case, detoxing estrogen and adding bioidentical progesterone cream has been a game changer to not only reducing migraine headaches, but in lessening period pain as well. While this may not be the case for everyone, there are various supplements and nutritional changes that may be right for each individual person. 

Hormone imbalances are occurring for a multitude of reasons. In some cases perhaps birth control pills have sent women’s hormones awry, and in other cases, environmental estrogens. Regardless of what caused the initial imbalance, treating each woman for who she is and how her body functions, through proper testing, is the key.

To learn more about what imbalance you could be dealing with, try taking my free hormone quiz at sync.jennyswisher.com.

xoxo,

Jenny